Redmi Turbo 5 Review: I came for the performance, stayed for everything else (HT Tech)

But after 2022, Xiaomi seemed to lose its edge, with many of its launches falling short of the brand’s reputation. Now it appears to be finding its way back. The Redmi Turbo 5 is priced under ₹40,000, and it offers a 1.5K AMOLED display, a capable processor, and a 7000mAh+ battery. This is happening at a time when smartphones with similar hardware cost ₹50,000 or more due to the RAM crisis.

On paper, it is an excellent value proposition. So I spent a month using the Redmi Turbo 5 to see whether its feature-rich specifications translated into an amazing real-world experience. Here’s what I found:

Redmi Turbo 5 Specifications:

As a result, Redmi’s new performance-centric model blends in with the rest of the smartphones on the market that share the same ideology. Xiaomi has tried to introduce a distinctive element, namely Pixel Matrix, to the Redmi Turbo 5. The Pixel Matrix is essentially a ring light around the camera module that lights up during events such as new notifications. While it does come in handy at times, it still cannot compensate for the otherwise derivative design.

Honestly, I feel saddened by this sight because I know Xiaomi has immense potential to create a timeless design that will stay fresh in people’s minds. Few phones illustrate this better than the Mi Mix 2, because even today it can hold its own against nearly every premium smartphone on the market.

But I truly appreciate that Xiaomi has backed its iPhone-inspired styling with an impressive in-hand feel on the Redmi Turbo 5. The rounded corners help the phone sit well in my palm without causing any sharp pain. With its metal frame and glass back, it also feels nice and cool to the touch. While the Redmi Turbo 5 weighs 204 grams, which is considered moderately heavy for a smartphone, the weight is surprisingly well distributed across the chassis. This further enhances the premium feel of the Xiaomi smartphone.

The Redmi Turbo 5 also excels in durability. The metal frame offers better protection against accidental drops. Meanwhile, the IP66, IP68, IP69, and IP69K ratings enable the Redmi Turbo 5 to withstand unexpected water-related events, such as torrential rain. That said, I still recommend minimising the risk of using the phone near water, as companies don’t offer a warranty against water damage.

While watching the Daemon of the Shadow Realm series, I was thoroughly impressed by how beautifully the Redmi Turbo 5 handled its layered colour palette, allowing each visual element to stand out. Speaking of the live-action series, even scenes from Monarch: Legacy of Monsters were rendered with crisp clarity.

Not just in visuals, the Redmi Turbo 5’s display also held up well outdoors. I had barely any issues in direct sunlight while checking my routes on Google Maps or adjusting the frame in the viewfinder.

While the display left me pleasantly happy, the speakers fell short of matching its quality. To be clear, the stereo speakers inside the Redmi Turbo 5 can effortlessly produce room-filling audio. But when it comes to audio quality, they struggle to handle music at the low end of the spectrum. As a result, they falter in delivering the intended, impactful SFX experience, such as explosions.

For context, the benchmark keeps a phone active by running a series of real-world smartphone tests, including video and photo editing, web browsing, and more, with Wi-Fi enabled in the background and the brightness set to 70%. This process concludes only when the battery drops below 20%.

Even in real-world use, I could comfortably get seven to eight hours of screen-on time from the Redmi Turbo 5 while still saving some charge for the next day. For reference, my typical usage includes social media browsing, internet research, and casual gaming. Once the battery ran out, the 100W charger would fully recharge it in an hour and eight minutes, completing an excellent battery package.

In daylight, the primary camera often delivered pleasing shots with good detail. It also reproduced subtle colours well, helping images retain a natural look. What blew me away was how exceptionally the main camera handled HDR processing.

This was best demonstrated by a photograph of my colleague standing against the sun on a cloudy day. Here, the Redmi Turbo 5 kept the highlights and shadows under control, allowing her complexion to stand out while preserving the sunlight shining through the clouds in the background.

Despite lacking a dedicated telephoto lens, the phone also impressed me with its portrait photography, largely thanks to its capable primary camera. It consistently nailed subject separation, with hair strands rarely blending into the background blur (bokeh).

The ultra-wide camera, by contrast, was the less impressive of the two. To be clear, it maintained a good balance between highlights and shadows and produced nearly natural colours in most photographs. That said, it struggled to preserve sharpness, with subjects near the corners, in particular, appearing noticeably softer.

The low-light camera performance was mostly satisfactory. In ideal lighting conditions, the primary camera would deliver images with clarity and pleasing colours. That said, challenging lighting sometimes prompted the sensor to add an oil-paint-like texture to the human subject in photographs.

Speaking of the front camera, it generally produces pleasant selfies in good lighting, with the human face appearing closer to its real-life appearance. It mostly delivers the same result in low light, but it sometimes smooths fine textures like stubble.

For starters, the phone feels as though its performance has been throttled right out of the box. Across all the CPU and GPU benchmarks I ran, as you can see, the Redmi Turbo 5 consistently trailed the Motorola Edge 70 Pro+, despite both phones using the same processor.

From the table, the Redmi Turbo 5 might appear more stable in some stress tests. In reality, it started from a much lower baseline and simply maintained performance more consistently from there.

I suspect Xiaomi adopted this approach to keep the phone running much cooler, at the expense of some performance loss. Even if that’s the case, the Redmi Turbo 5 still warms up when running graphically intensive games, including Wuthering Waves and Genshin Impact, particularly around the metal frame.

Speaking of gaming, here’s how the Redmi Turbo 5 compares with the Motorola Edge 70 Pro+ in Wuthering Waves and Genshin Impact:

To put things into perspective, I played Genshin Impact and Wuthering Waves for 20 minutes each on both phones. As a rule of thumb, the smaller the gap between the average FPS and the 5% low FPS, the smoother the gameplay tends to feel. In Genshin Impact, the Motorola Edge 70 Pro+ held a slight edge over the Redmi Turbo 5. In Wuthering Waves, however, the difference was much more pronounced, making gameplay feel considerably smoother on the Motorola Edge 70 Pro+ during intense moments.

The main reason is how well Xiaomi has tuned the software experience. Animations and transitions during everyday touch interactions feel exceptionally fluid, making the interface appear far more responsive than on previous Xiaomi phones I have used. In fact, I would put its smoothness on a par with OnePlus and Samsung, two brands that have consistently set the benchmark in this area.

That said, Xiaomi has not addressed all of HyperOS’s familiar quirks. Promotional app recommendations still appear regularly, and a few pre-installed apps feel suspicious.